The teen romance The Spectacular Now is by turns goofy, exhilarating, and unreasonably sad — just like being a teenager.
It centers on a fast-talking, hard-drinking high school party animal named Sutter Keely, who boasts of living for today and in the now — instead of, say, studying — and how he takes up with a girl named Aimee, who’s the opposite of a party animal.
At first it’s obvious that Sutter is only with Aimee as a rebound thing — his beautiful blond ex has dropped him, and he wants to make her jealous. But more and more we see something deeper in the pair’s connection. And we begin to perceive the looming tragedy in Sutter Keely’s life.
The Spectacular Now is based on a fine, unshowy novel by Tim Tharp, which is made showier and slicker in the script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber — they made the indie hit 500 Days of Summer. But director James Ponsoldt turns off the metronome in every scene, letting the actors find their own gentle rhythms.
Sutter is played by Miles Teller, who didn’t get the attention he deserved in a tough role in the film Rabbit Hole. Teller doesn’t have a trained actor’s diction, but it’s that touch of amateurishness that makes his Sutter more believable; the last thing you want here is a song-and-dance kid who looks as if he came straight from theater camp.